The Salvatore Mistress
by idontgiveadamnsoshutup16
Summary: Elena, a famous nude model, is now Damon's 'mistress'. Things are great until Damon's father got sick and he is now obliged to marry and produce an heir. But Elena, the only girl he wants, is out of the question. Dare he take his mistress as his wife?
1. In medias res

Summary: After starring in a nude painting that made her notorious, Elena Gilbert fell in love and became the mistress of young business tycoon, Damon Salvatore. Things get complicated, however, when Damon's father became ill and as a consequence, he was now faced with the obligation to marry and produce an heir.

But who should he choose as a bride? Elena isn't suitable, but she's the only woman he wants in his life and his bed. Is he willing to make his mistress as his wife?

**A/N: Loosely based on a novel I read. I do not own anything.**

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><p>The bed was a sea of rumpled white linen. Tangled amongst it Damon Salvatore could see a long tanned leg bent at the knee and the smooth silken-curve of a hip and thigh. The rest was covered by fine white sheeting but for a slender arm and the rippling swathe of chocolate brown hair flowing away from the kind of profile that would have launched ships in times gone by.<p>

Only her name was not Helen, it was Elena, and, although her beauty might have launched many metaphorical ships in her time, there was no disputing to whom she now belonged.

Leaning back against the balcony rail, Damon allowed himself a smile as he brought his coffee cup to his lips. It was still very early, but the sun was already hot against his naked back. He had come out onto the terrace directly from his shower, and the white towel draped low around his narrow hips was his only concession to modesty, here, in his summer villa perched high on the hill, where the only eyes to see him belonged to the seagulls soaring on the early morning currents of air.

And Elena, of course, if she bothered to wake up. But, unlike him, she didn't have to be back in New York by nine o'clock, so she had no reason to rise this early.

_Although_, he then added ruefully to that, if she did happen to awaken now, it would be the simplest thing in the world for him to linger long enough to drop the towel and join her back in the bed.

_But not yet_, Damon told himself as he took another sip from his cup. The coffee was hot, black and strong and was just another pleasure he enjoyed lingering over while he leant here watching his woman sleep.

In the year they had been together he had never seen Elena look anything but beautiful. Dressed to slay or stripped bare to the exquisite skin nature had given her, she exuded a beauty that by far outclassed any other woman he had known. He was proud to be her lover, proud that only he held the right to place a possessive hand upon any part of her anatomy. Proud that she only had eyes for him.

_But did he love her?_He asked himself.

_No,_ he admitted heavily. _He didn't love her_. He loved how she looked, and how she always made him feel. And he would willingly have laid down his own life if it meant him saving hers. But true love had to go deeper than that. He had to love what she was, and he didn't.

A sigh caught in the depth of his chest. A cloud blotted out the sun. A seagull shrieked in protest. The coffee suddenly tasted bitter. Putting the cup aside he turned to stare at the misted-blue waters of the shimmering in the distance—and wished to hell he knew what he was going to do about her.

Letting her go was out of the question. Letting her stay meant trouble in more ways than one. Out there, across hills and lush valleys that made up his beautiful Mystic Falls, trouble was brewing. It came in the form of an autocratic mother and an ailing father with an urgent desire to see his son safely married and settled before he died.

Marrying Elena, even without the true-love bit, would be the easiest thing in the world for him to do.  
>She was young, she was beautiful and she loved him totally. But what parent would condone their only son, and the heir to the great Salvatore fortune, marrying himself to a woman like Elena?<p>

A woman with the kind of past that was destined to dog her forever. A woman with the kind of past that  
>would reflect poorly on him and his family name. A woman who made the perfect mistress—but could<br>never be the perfect wife for him.

Another sigh whispered from him. Maybe Elena heard it, because she began to stir. Recovering his coffee-cup, Damon turned to watch her slide lazily onto her back then, even before she bothered to open her eyes, send an arm out to search the empty space beside her in the bed. It was a gesture so familiar to him that he actually felt the hairs on his chest prickle as if she had reached out and touched him. The sensation placed the smile back on his lips, because it pleased him to know that the first thing she always thought about on waking was him.

When she found no warm male body lying beside her, her next move was to open her lovely eyes, pause  
>for a moment to allow the remnants of sleep to disperse, then, in a single smooth graceful movement, she sat up and began to search for him.<p>

She found him almost instantly. A warm lover's smile touched her lovely mouth. "Damon," she greeted him softly.

His response was a lazy masculine gleam over the rim of his cup, while inside he became aware of the  
>chemical responses already beginning to stir his blood. She moved him in so many ways he didn't dare count them.<p>

Sliding out of the bed, she lifted her arms above her head and indulged in a long lazy stretch that highlighted every perfect contour of her very naked frame from slender toes to delicate fingertips. Her light olive skin shone like the finest silk ever created. Her wonderful hair tumbled in loosely spiraling threads down her arching spine. In all his life Damon had never known any woman quite as perfect as Elena. Her face, her hair, her sensational body—the way she moved as she began to walk towards him.

Like the world's most dangerous siren, she roused the male senses without even having to try. Even the  
>sun worshipped her by coming out from behind its cloud at the same moment she stepped onto the terrace, pooling her in soft golden light as she continued her slow graceful journey towards him.<p>

It was no wonder Stefan Forwood had been so obsessed with her, Damon thought with a sudden grimness. No wonder he'd painted her every single way an artist could paint an obsession. Seeing her like this, he could easily understand why the man had felt so compelled to preserve her naked image. For years Elena had appeared in all of his paintings, not always the main focal point but always the slender naked figure you looked for whenever you found yourself viewing a Forwood. But in his desire to make Elena immortal he had turned her into every man's titillating fantasy. Her naked form now adorned the walls of the rich and famous. When she walked into a room those in the know stopped and stared in intimate recognition.

Did she care? No. Did she blush with embarrassment or hide her eyes in shame? Not this woman, who was as comfortable with her body as she was comfortable with those wretched paintings.

As for him? Damon was very much aware that Elena's notoriety as Stefan Forwood's famous nude model gave him certain kudos amongst his envious peers. But it didn't mean he liked it, only that he had  
>learnt to accept it because, like Forwood in a way, he was obsessed with the woman—though not the haunted creature held captive in oils.<p>

Coming to a halt directly in front of him, Elena said absolutely nothing but just held his gaze as she  
>folded slender white fingers over the strong brown ones he had wrapped around his coffee cup. Her eyes gleamed like topaz in the sun, his darkened into humor as she guided the cup towards her own mouth and took a few delicate sips at the coffee before just as silently lifting the cup to his own mouth.<p>

More than happy to play this little game the way she wanted him to play it, Damon obediently drank while their eyes remained locked in the beginnings of seduction. With both mouths moistened by warm black coffee, she then guided the cup away, lifted herself up on bare tiptoes, and replaced it with a kiss.

The aroma of coffee swirled all around them, its erotic taste flavored their mouths, the points of her  
>breasts hovered a soft-breath away from his chest and, beneath the towel, his body began to respond.<p>

This was making love on a different level, this was intimacy so deep it touched parts of him never other-  
>wise touched. As she drew away again, her eyes held a promise. Maybe he would take her up on it in a minute, Damon idly considered. But for now he was content to enjoy the more simple pleasure of being the passive one while she did the seducing.<p>

She began it by touching a finger to the satin tight hollow of his shoulder. "You showered without me," she complained.

He smiled a lazy smile. "You were asleep," he reminded her.

She was not in the least bit impressed by that answer, and her mouth took on a sulky pout. Taking the coffee cup from his fingers she put it aside, took possession of both his hands and fed them round her slender waist, then lifted her own up to curve his nape. One small step and she was fitting her hips into the cradle of his hips and pressing her wonderful breasts against him. Then her head tilted back a little, her sulky mouth parted and claimed his with another kiss designed to devour.

He would have to be made of stone not to respond to her. He would have to be half the man he actually  
>was not to want what was being offered to him. It was special. She was special. He didn't want to lose it.<p>

"What was that for?" she broke the kiss to demand when she felt him shiver.

"The sun has gone in again," he said.

And it had, he noticed. Like a bad omen, it had slid behind another cloud the moment he'd begun thinking about the future.

"Big softy," she chided, her fingers tangling lovingly into his hair. "You want to try standing like this on an  
>English balcony. You would die of frostbite, being such a thin-blooded Italian."<p>

He was supposed to laugh or come back with a light counter-charge, Damon was well aware of that. But he could do neither because he was suddenly seeing her standing naked on that English balcony.

Seeing her exactly as she had once been caught for posterity in a Forwood painting.

"You would know, of course," was therefore the cynical taunt that slid from him.

Her sudden stillness was electric. Even if he'd slapped her he couldn't have achieved a better response. Kiss-warmed lips lost all of their softness. Warm topaz became cold grey glass. With a single step she completely separated herself from him and, without a single word, she turned and walked back into the bedroom.

Remorse played havoc with his conscience as he watched her sensual stride take her towards the bath-  
>room. The urge to go after her and apologize came a couple of short seconds too late. The door closed, he heard the bolt slide home and knew he now had one hell of a task on his hands to put right the wrong he had just done.<p>

"Damn," he cursed as he spun away.

The sun crept out from behind its cloud again. He scowled at it. Scowled at the seagull soaring overhead.  
>Then he scowled at himself because he knew that putting right a wrong would not solve the dilemma that was sitting right on his doorstep waiting to be addressed.<p>

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><p>On the other side of the bathroom door, Elena stood with her eyes closed, waiting for the hurt contracting the muscles around her heart to ease. It hadn't been the words but the way he had said them, with derision, deliberately aimed to cut.<p>

Stefan, she thought wearily. It always came back to Stefan, and Damon's inability to accept the life she had led before she met him. For a man who prided himself on his fast-track modem sophistication, he harbored some truly archaic principles.

One of these days she would find the strength to stand firm and challenge those principles, and this right he felt he had to speak to her like that, she promised herself.

But not yet, she conceded heavily. She just didn't have that kind of strength yet. Because to challenge him meant challenging their whole relationship, and the day she did that Elena knew would be the same day she lost Damon for good.

Though that moment was coming closer, she recognized, as the hurt began to fade much sooner than it  
>usually did after one of his well-aimed barbs. And she found she could open her eyes and actually look at herself in the mirror opposite without wincing at what she saw.<p>

And what did she see?

She saw a scarlet woman, she grimly mocked that reflection. A woman who was a mistress to a man who wasn't even married but who still classed her as a mistress not a lover. In her view, there was a very important difference between the two titles. To be a man's lover carried a certain amount of moral equality. To be his mistress showed a distinct lack of moral value. And was there such thing as a master to level out the playing field? No, of course not. He remained simply the lover, with no stigma at all attached to the title. You could have a pair of lovers but you could not have a pair of mistresses—not in this context anyway. No, that unenviable tide belonged exclusively to her own fair sex.

Sex being the operative word here. She lived in his home, she slept in his bed, and she relied on his financial generosity for her day-to-day survival. In return she gave him her absolute loyalty "and her body—the true definition of a mistress, in other words.

Not a bad life for a girl who came from nothing, she supposed. In fact, it would be pretty much a perfect  
>life—if she didn't love him as desperately as she did.<p>

Loving Damon made it a miserable life.

How had Stefan described Damon when he'd tried to talk her out of coming to Mystic Falls to live with him?

""_He's one of life's elite," he said. "He might want your body but he will never want you the way you want him to want you. You're not of the fellowship, my darling. It is a simple fact of life that elite marries elite."  
><em>  
>Tough but wise words, as she'd found out the hard way. And if she had any sense at all she would get out, she told her reflection. She would gather up what little bit of pride she had left, and go, before he cleaned her out completely.<p>

And maybe she would do—soon, she resolved.

But she turned away from the mirror as she thought it, knowing that it would take more than the occasional cruel remark on his part to make her leave him. She loved him too much and had stuck with him too long to give up so easily.

Which didn't mean she was going to forgive him, she determined as she stepped into the shower cubicle. Forgiveness came at a price, and Damon was going to have to pay that price with some serious groveling.

A smile touched her mouth, the very idea of making the arrogant Damon Salvatore grovel doing wonders for her mood.

He was gone from the bedroom by the time she reappeared. Gone from the villa too, she discovered when she came downstairs to find Nina, the maid, clearing away what looked like a hastily eaten breakfast.

"Sir Salvatore left for New York ten minutes ago, miss," she informed her. "He said to remind you  
>about the party tonight and to tell you to drive carefully, for the summer traffic between here is said to be very bad."<p>

Elena thanked the maid for the message, and smiled in recognition of the routine. Damon was making  
>himself scarce because he knew he had hurt her, but making sure he kept the lines of communication open as he went.<p>

Why? Because for a big tough corporate leader, with a reputed heart of stone and a tongue of steel, when it came to her, he hated dissension. He might not love her the way she wanted to be loved, but he loved her enough to feel uncomfortable when he had upset her. And, being a very selfish man, Damon liked to be comfortable in his private life.

Hence the message telling her to drive carefully, and the reminder about the party tonight. This was Damon putting down the first stepping-stones back to his precious comfort. Other stepping-stones would follow at timely intervals, Elena predicted as she sat down to eat breakfast, alone for the first time in the week they had just spent here doing very little but making love and sleeping.

A week he'd arranged as a surprise treat for her birthday—along with the flaming red Porsche which now stood in the courtyard. Last year he had given her a sweet little Fiat to use to get around in. But she had only been with him for a month then, so the value of the gift had reflected that.

Like a bonus for time put in, she likened, and wondered what he would think a fitting bonus for her next  
>birthday. <em>"If she was still around",<em>she added, felt her heart give a tug, and got up from the table to go back upstairs to pack, refusing to answer that little sarcasm—or question why her heart had given that singular tug.

An hour later, dressed in a pair of slender white Capri pants and a skimpy-red T-shirt, her hair stylishly contained on the top of her head, Elena was sitting in the creamy interior of the red Porsche, reading the note Damon had left for her on the dashboard.

"I prefer you to arrive home to me in one beautiful piece." It said.

Elena's smile held a hint of softness this time—not at the message itself so much as the way that Damon  
>had taken time to pause long enough to sit here and write this before climbing into his Ferrari and driving away.<p>

It was another stepping-stone neatly laid, and she was still smiling when she put her new toy into gear, then began following his long journey back to New York, idly pondering on what his next move would be.

He was nothing if not a brilliant tactician. He waited until she'd reached the outskirts of Mystic Falls before making contact again.

Then her mobile began to ring.

Glancing down to where it sat in its hands-free housing, Elena pondered for a few rings whether to ignore it and just let him stew. But, in the end, irresistible temptation won over stubbornness and. with a flick of a button, she sanctioned the connection.

"Ciao, mi amore." The deep dark tones of his voice filled the car-space, soft, warm and aimed to seduce,  
>she felt tingles of excitement run down her spine. "You were, of course, too busy concentrating on your driving to answer the phone straight away."<p>

Not a question exactly, but more a remark loaded with satire. He knew she had hesitated over whether to speak to him.

"What do you want?" she demanded curtly.

"That depends," he murmured suggestively, "on where you are right now."

"Walking naked in a bar, living up to expectations," she promptly tossed back at him.

As a direct hit back at what he had said to her this morning, it should have caught him on the raw. Instead, it was the turn of his appreciative laughter to coil itself all around her. Elena wriggled in her seat and wished she could hate him. But what she was experiencing was far from hate, and it took a couple of risky maneuvers through the heavy traffic to help dispel the sensation.

"And to think," he said eventually, "I refused lunch at the Lockwood's just to talk to you."

"Bad move, caro," Elena responded. "the Lockwood's was by far your better option."

"And you sulk like a prima donna," he smoothly threw back.

He was right and she did. But then she felt justified. Still, the remark held a warning she would be a fool not to heed. "You told me you had back-to-back meetings all day," she murmured with less sarcasm. "Lunch at the Lockwood's is usually an all-afternoon thing."

"I surprise myself sometimes with my own efficiency," was his light reply.

"And your conceit," she added.

"Ah, that too," he had the arrogance to agree.

Despite not wanting it to, Elena felt her mouth twitch into a grin. In truth, his arrogance and conceit were major parts of what made Damon the charismatic person he was. Plus his sensational dark good looks, she then wryly added as she sped off and headed for the city centre. Then there was his great  
>body, and his prowess as lover, and the way he...<p>

"In truth, lunch at the Lockwood's was never an option." The sound of his voice grabbed her attention back again. "The morning meetings ran overtime. The first one of the afternoon begins in half an hour. So here I am, sitting at my desk, with a take-away sandwich to ease my hunger, a newspaper to feed my mind—and a desperate desire to hear you say something nice to me."

"Huh," was all she offered.

"You really want me to grovel, don't you?" his rueful voice drawled.

"Preferably on your knees," Elena confirmed.

"Mmm," Damon murmured. "Now this sounds interesting. There are so many—many ways I can beg your forgiveness from that position."

Her impulsive burst of laughter refused to be held in check. Across the city haze, in his plush office, Damon leant back in his chair and smiled a satisfied smile. Then, with the charm of a master, he turned the conversation to more ordinary things, like what she intended to do with her afternoon, and what time they needed to leave the apartment this evening to attend the first wedding anniversary  
>party being thrown by his best friend Alaric and his lovely wife Jenna.<p>

By the time he replaced the receiver, Damon was satisfyingly sure that this morning's stupidity on his part had been carefully soothed away and he could begin to relax again.

Reaching out, he picked up his sandwich and removed it from its wrapping, then collected up his news-  
>paper, he lifted his feet onto the corner of the desk, and settled back to enjoy a half-hour of leisure before his next meeting began with a pair of young hopefuls who wanted his financial backing for their very good idea but fell short of his investment criteria by possessing the business skills of a pair of dogs.<p>

Until five minutes ago be had been intending to send them away with the curt advice to learn how to run a business before attempting to start one. But now he felt much more amenable. Maybe he would even offer to oversee the project himself!

Then he opened the newspaper and any hint of amenability died a death in that moment. For there staring out at him was none other than—Stefan Forwood. He was standing inside one of Milan's most respected private art galleries. And the full-page article was really a plug for the Romano Gallery, where the artist was planning to exhibit next week.

But that wasn't the thing that was knotting up Damon. It was the unsavory suspicion that if Forwood was in town then Elena must know about it, but she hadn't mentioned a word to him!

Did she know?

Was she planning to meet up with him secretly? She had done it before at least once, to his knowledge.

Elena might have left Stefan to come to live in Milan with him, but the ex-lovers had not parted enemies. During a trip to London earlier this year, he had discovered by pure accident that she had spent a whole day with Stefan.

_"Don't tell me who I can and who I can't see!" she'd declared when he'd objected. "Stefan will always be  
>very special to me, and if you can't cope with that, then that's your problem, not mine, Damon."<br>_  
>It had been one of a very few times when she'd actually looked ready to walk away from him if he tried<br>to push the issue. He hadn't pushed it. But, for the first time in his life, he'd experienced the ugly burn of jealousy, when he'd realized that Stefan held a power over Elena that was a challenge to his own.

He didn't like it. He didn't like the knowledge that he'd backed down from taking up that challenge. And  
>he didn't like Stefan turning up in Mystic Falls just when Damon was having to do some serious thinking about his relationship with Elena.<p>

It was either immaculate timing on Stefan's part or yet another bad omen. Either way, the sandwich never got eaten and the two young hopefuls lost all chance of meeting an amiable Damon Salvatore that day. If it hadn't been for the fact that Damon was still functioning clearly enough to recognize an unmissable opportunity in what they were proposing, he would have taken great delight in kicking them out!

Irritation alternated with disturbing bouts of skin prickling restlessness throughout the rest of the afternoon. Sudden flashes of Elena and Stefan holed-up somewhere secret played games with his head.

In the end he could stand it no longer and went back to the privacy of his office to pick up the phone. Her mobile was switched off. Irritation ripped through him, then he remembered her telling him she was going straight back to the apartment, so he rang there instead.

All he got was his own pre-recorded message telling him that no one was available to take his call.

* * *

><p>Elena was standing in a tiny, backstreet in another, less fashionable part of the city, fitting a key into a door. Once inside, she walked the narrow hallway and began climbing bare-footed the flights of stairs, passing by small dingy offices belonging to the kinds of businesses.<p>

Elena looked down upon from his lofty position at the top of the corporate tree. Some of the tenants knew her, some didn't, most looked curiously at her, smiled politely and left her alone. She liked it that way. For this place was her secret A part of her life Damon didn't control.

On the very top landing, she went to the only door there and fitted another key into its lock. Stepping inside, she carefully closed the door again and then, turning round, she looked about her and quite simply smiled.

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><p>Shall I continue?<p> 


	2. More Complicated Feelings

**A/N: Thanks for the review guys! :)**

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><p>Walking through the front door to the Milan apartment was always a pleasure. And the first thing Elena did as she stepped into it some hours later was pause for a moment to reacquaint herself with surroundings that were a thousand times different from those she had just come from.<p>

Occupying the entire top floor of a modem city block, Damon's home was an interior designer's idea of heaven. No detail had been skimped in an effort to achieve its harmonious ambience.

The hall was large and light and airy, the rooms leading off from it furnished with a clever mix of classical, old and new. Nothing offended the eye. There were formal rooms used only for entertaining, less grand rooms for when they did not. The kitchen was a cook's paradise, all four en-suite bedrooms designed to co-ordinate with the pastel colors applied to the walls. And everywhere you went you walked on the very best in Italian ceramic, passing between priceless works of art that adorned the walls.

Like his famous art-collecting ancestors, Damon had inherited an eye for what was just that bit special. Both he and his mother were generous patrons of the arts. What either of them bought, others took particular notice of. And, as with his taste in decor, he thought nothing of mixing the totally unknown with old respected masters—and of course it had worked beautifully.

But she didn't have time to stand here considering all of this right now, Elena told herself wryly. She was late and she knew it. Somehow, time seemed to have got away from her today, and she was aware that she'd only just made it back before Damon usually arrived home.

_Live dangerously, why don't you? _She scolded herself as she headed directly for the bedroom, meaning to make it look as if she had been in there for ages getting ready for the evening when he did eventually get in. It turned out to be a wasted effort for, as fate would have it; Damon didn't appear until she was already dressed for the evening and beginning to wonder what had happened to him.

Then the bedroom door suddenly swung open and he came striding in.

"You're late," she immediately chided.

"I have a watch," he clipped back and walked right past her without even sparing her a glance.

Frowning slightly, Elena watched him begin pulling off his jacket in a way that spoke volumes about his mood.

"Bad day?" she quizzed.

"Bad everything," he said grimly.

"Hence no welcoming smile for me, no kiss hello?" Teasing though her voice sounded, she was serious After the efforts he'd put in, sweet-talking himself back into her favor, this new attitude was threatening to send him right back to square one if he wasn't careful.

Maybe he realized it because, after tossing the jacket onto the bed, he then stood for a moment flexing his wide shoulders as if he was trying to dislodge whatever it was that was bugging him. As she watched solid muscle move beneath pale blue shirting, Elena felt the usual sprinkling of pleasure warm her insides, and would have gone to him and helped ease those tense muscles—if he hadn't released a sigh and turned to look at her.

The expression on his face held her stationary. His eyes were glinting with barely suppressed anger, his features hard and grim and unusually pale. In a single brief sweep he gave her appearance the once-over, then his mouth tightened and he turned away again.

Warning bells began to ring in her head.

"What's wrong?" she asked sharply.

"Nothing," he clipped out. Then on another short sigh added, "Give me ten minutes to make myself human and we will begin this conversation again, I think."

"Fair enough," she agreed. It wasn't often she'd witnessed the darker side of Damon, but on those few occasions she had done so, she'd learned very quickly to tread warily around him until he had calmed down. But she was still frowning as she let herself out of the bedroom, wondering what could have happened this afternoon to put him in that kind of mood.

_Bad meeting? A fortune lost on the Stock Exchange?_ She mused as she walked into the small sitting room and straight over to the drinks bar to mix him his favorite bourbon while she waited for him to join her.

The ten minutes he'd allocated himself had obviously not been long enough, was her first observation when he joined her. He came into the room with his hair still slightly damp from his quick shower and his fingers impatiently tugging the white cuffs to his shirt into line with the black silk edges of his dinner jacket—and it was clear, by the look on his face, that he was feeling no better.

"Here, try this. It might help," she drily suggested, offering him the prepared drink.

"'No time," he refused. "And anyway, I'm driving." With that, he diverted over to the mirror and began messing with his bow-tie.

And the hand holding out the alcoholic drink slowly back to the drinks bar as it began to dawn on Elena that his mood had nothing to do with a bad day at the office, but had something to do with her.

"All right," she said, deciding to take him on so they could get whatever it was that was annoying him out of the way before the evening began. "Tell me what it is I'm supposed to have done to make you so angry."

"Who said you'd done anything?" Bow-tie perfect, shut-cuffs straight, he turned his attention to checking his watch. "If you're ready, we should get going..."

And she was ready. Dipping her eyes to look down at the slender red silk dress she was wearing—newly bought this afternoon with Damon in mind because he loved to see her in red—Elena felt her own happy mood shatter. The dress, the way she'd done up her hair so only the odd fine silk tendril caressed her nape, and even the blush-red lipstick she was wearing, had all been chosen with his pleasure in mind.

And it hurt that he was deliberately ignoring that. That his voice might sound mellow but the message was cold. Cold like the silence he was now allowing to develop, even when he must know what she was thinking because he deciphered atmospheres in a room as easily as he deciphered a page full of figures.

The man was an accounting genius; it therefore went without saying that he wanted her to feel this hurt. But more painful was the knowledge that he had done this to her twice in one day.

_What was the matter with him? What was he trying to tell her with these violent swings in his mood? That he'd had enough? That she'd begun to irritate him so much that he couldn't seem to look at her without taking a verbal swipe at her?  
><em>  
>The idea wasn't a new one. She had been suspecting it on and off for a while, though until this morning they had just enjoyed a whole week of near perfect harmony and she had begun to believe that she'd been imagining his growing irritation with her.<p>

But now, as she stood here in this carefully orchestrated silence, the suspicion returned with a vengeance._ Was she growing stale? Did he want out? Had the week away been arranged in an effort to recapture what he was no longer feeling for her?  
><em>  
><em><strong>Twice in one day, <strong>_she repeated to herself. Twice he'd been deliberately hurtful.

"Cara?" He prompted her to answer.

The endearment made her insides wince. "Yes" she said quietly. "I'm ready.''

But, as she turned away to retrieve her little red purse from where she had left it, she found herself wondering exactly what it was she was ready for. Losing him?

A sharp pain caught her breath for a moment, holding her still while she waited for it to ease in much the same way she had done this morning. By that example the sensation should have dispersed quickly. But it didn't. In fact, the surer she became that he was tiring of her, the more it was beginning to hurt. Yet she had always known that this could only ever be a temporary affair, she tried to reason. And, as some people were always eager to tell her, she had lasted longer than most. Those were usually the same people who were also quick to explain that when Damon Bellini married it would be to a woman of his own social standing. Someone with money, someone with class, and someone with a lineage to match the superior weight of his. And, most importantly, someone his parents would welcome with open arms.

Certainly not a little American nobody who had never known her father. A woman who wasn't deemed fit to even be in the same room as any of his relatives. And worse, a woman who didn't mind exposing her body to the world.

"What's this?" The questioning sound of Damon's voice impinged on her bleak summing up of herself.

Having to blink a couple of times before she could face him, she found him standing there with a gold-wrapped flat package in his hands.

"Oh, it's a gift for Alaric and Jenna." Eyes still slightly glazed, she turned away again. "I realized we hadn't got them anything, so I went shopping before coming on here."

* * *

><p>Shopping.<p>

For several moments Damon couldn't move a single muscle. Remorse was cutting into him for the second time that day. While he'd been suspecting her of meeting secretly with Stefan she'd been trawling the shops, looking for an anniversary gift for his own two closest friends.

He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to say to put right the wrong he'd done her—yet again.

"I'm sorry, cara," seemed the only thing to offer. "I should have thought about this myself."

There was a double meaning to the last part, though he was relieved Elena couldn't know it. She winced at the cara, though, he noticed.

"It doesn't matter. Your money paid for it."

With that she walked stiffly away, leaving her very derisive offering hanging in the air behind her. With a silent curse aimed at his own nasty suspicions, Damon followed, grimly deciding to keep his mouth shut since he was well aware that he had successfully managed to wipe her clean of all hint of good humor by now.

And she looked gorgeous, delectable, and good enough to eat— though he knew he had left it too late to tell her that. The dress was short, red and very sexy the way it clung to every slender curve she possessed. It made him want to run his hands all over her, but that was just another pleasure he had denied himself with his lousy mood.

* * *

><p>Elena lifted the latch on the front door and stepped through, leaving Damon to set the alarm and lock up, while she called the lift. It arrived as he did. They stepped inside it. The lift took them down towards the basement with Elena occupying one comer, he another, and the atmosphere was so thick he could have cut it with a knife.<p>

If she was brilliant at only one thing, then it would have to be her ability to freeze people out, he mused as he viewed her glacial expression.

"Do you want me to apologize for taking my bad temper out on you?" he sighed eventually.

"What—again?" she drawled. Then, "No, don't bother," she advised, before he could answer. "No doubt you'll be doing it again before too long, which renders your apologies pretty meaningless gestures."

Perhaps he deserved that, Damon conceded. But irritation began to bite into him again. He didn't like being treated like a leper just because he'd made a natural mistake.

_Natural? _He quizzed himself.

Yes, damn natural, he insisted arrogantly. He might no longer suspect her of spending the afternoon with Stefan, but that didn't mean she didn't know the man was here in Mystic Falls!

Well, he was damned if he was going to bring the subject up first, he decided, grimly aware that he didn't really want to know the answer. For to know the answer meant dealing with it. And he didn't want to deal with anything that could risk his relationship with Elena. Not until he had made up his own mind where it was going to go, anyway.

So, with that niggling little confession to chew on, he let the atmosphere remain thick or the next thirty seconds it took the lift to sink. They left it side by side, to walk between the rows of parked cars towards his Ferrari, passing by her neatly parked red Porsche without either of them sparing it a glance.

Three days old and she doesn't even see it. Which in its own way, made the car just another wasted gesture on his part, he noted testily. She had been ecstatic when he took her away for a week as part of her birthday present, but the car had produced only the usual polite remarks people use when they're given something they're really not that impressed with.

With ingrained good manners that went back a lifetime, he opened the passenger door of the Ferrari and remained standing by it while Elena slipped grace fully inside. For the briefest of moments only a few centimeters separated them. It was the closest they'd been since this morning on the balcony in Portofino, he realized, as her delicate perfume filled his nostrils and his senses reacted in their usual way.

Grimly, he ignored their message, when only yesterday he would have been freely indulging every sense he possessed.

With his lips pressed together in a steadily darkening mood of discontent, he placed the gift for Alaric and Jenna on her lap, closed the door, and then rounded the car bonnet to get in beside her. As he settled himself into his seat he caught a glimpse of her icy profile, clenched his teeth together, and turned his attention to getting them moving.

And the silence between them was still so bad it murdered normal body functions like breathing and swallowing. He couldn't stand it. "Are you going to tell me what's in the parcel?' he asked as lightly as he could in the circumstances.

"A painting," she answered briefly.

Having already worked that part out for himself, by the shape and the feel of the gift, Damon took a deep breath for patience. "What kind of painting?" He prompted.

"Why?" She flicked back. "Are you worried that I don't have the right credentials to choose something acceptable for your friends?"

At which point he gave up. In this kind of mood she was impossible. Sinking back into stiff silence, neither spoke again for the rest of the journey.

Alaric and Jenna de Saltzman lived in a large house in one of the select residential areas out on the edges of the city. Arriving so late meant it was difficult to find a parking space in the long driveway. Cursing beneath his breath, Damon had to do some pretty deft maneuvering to slot the long car in between two others already parked. By the time he switched off the engine the atmosphere between them was so tight you could have played an overture on its taut threads.

It was no wonder Elena was eager to escape from it.

Damon released a hard sigh as he watched her fumble in her rush to unlock her seat belt. "The filthy atmosphere remains here in the car," he bit out warningly.

They were about to go amongst his friends, after all. He had no wish for them to witness his less than harmonious love life.

The false smile she turned on him set a nerve ticking in his jaw—and had other parts of him rising to its provocative bait. He could soften her in seconds, right here, in these cramped confines. He knew a few simple moves that would remind her as to why she was even sitting here at all!

"Get out of the car," he growled at her before he replaced the thought with a very satisfying action.

* * *

><p>Elena didn't need telling for she was already opening the door. Stepping out of air-conditioned coolness into the heat of an Italian summer evening, she stood there taking in a few deep breaths of that air in the vague hopes that it would help warm her up inside.<p>

No chance. Now the suspicion that he was growing weary of her had set itself as cold hard fact in her head, the idea of feeling warm ever again was impossible to imagine.

In truth, she had almost refused to come tonight. For a few minutes, back there in the apartment, she had almost taken the mammoth step of taking the initiative and calling it a day. She had her pride after all. And it had no wish to cling on to something that was already dying, even if Damon was willing to hang on until the whole affair had finally strangled itself to death.

But then he'd brought her attention to the gift for Alaric and Jenna and she'd changed her mind. The couple might be Damon's friends, but they had also become her friends over the last year—Jenna especially.

Leaving Damon was one thing. Doing it on the night of Jenna's wedding anniversary party would cast a black cloud over her friend's special night, and she had no wish to do that.

And anyway, she admitted, as she waited for Damon to come and join her, she wanted to be here. She wanted to go out with a smile and her head held high, not slink off into the darkness like a pet dog that had lost favor with its master.

_But tomorrow_, she promised herself, _she would leave._

* * *

><p><strong>Okay. I think this chapter sucks but it's really important to understand the feelings of the characters first. So, I'm sorry if you didn't like this one. Review? :D<strong>


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